Tag Archives: aging

So kiss me and smile for me

So kiss me and smile for me

Tell me that you’ll wait for me

Hold me like you’ll never let me go*

My mom asked me a few months ago, having watched a documentary about the late John Denver on PBS, if I would maybe “go in” with my siblings and buy her a John Denver CD for Christmas. She didn’t want to tax me too heavily, lovely woman that she is. <3

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So, Dave made a CD of John Denver songs from his iTunes and I took it to her when I went to visit 2 weeks ago. She was so surprised. She barely remembered the documentary, if at all, and certainly didn’t recall asking for a CD, but she was happy to have it.

My visit this time has a musical soundtrack. And it is the sound of John Denver music drifting from her corner room, from a little CD player she can no longer remember how to work on her own, even though my sister painted “play” in large white letters.

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My sweetest mamala is suffering dementia, being treated for Alzheimer’s Disease. And the changes are so gradual if you’re in the room with her, that they’re much less perceptible. But I am not there, so when I visit, changes are glaring, and I lose my breath for a moment when I see another part of her gone. My dad always asks me what I see as different because he is “in the room,” day and night, night and day.

When I visited 2 months ago in August, during our family reunion, she kept asking me what words were on a stitched pillow her best friend had sent to her. “Friendship,” I’d tell her. She’d look intently at it and then say, “Oh right, there is the ‘i.’ Oh, and that’s ‘f’.” Then she’d say, “Friendship.”

15 minutes later, she’d pick the pillow up and ask me again. Everyday I was there, several times.

I asked my dad, “When did she begin to lose reading?” He was so surprised, he had been wondering why she wasn’t reading her Bible each morning like she always has. Reading is not totally lost to her yet. But it mostly is. She still keeps her Bible and her beloved dictionary close by at all times, but they are rarely opened. Sometimes she has to really focus her gaze for a long time to make out what the newspaper article is about. And if the article is continued in another column, or heaven forbid, on another page, she thinks they somehow just quit writing and finds it foolish for them to have done that.

This time, my most recent visit, she couldn’t sing Mairzy Doats, a beloved song from her childhood, with me anymore. Wherever it is she is going, down whatever hall dementia is taking her, that song doesn’t make sense and those aren’t real words so she cannot remember them at all. And she has no desire to recall them. My mom sang that to me my whole life. Then she sang it to my children. She and I sang it to some of my grandchildren. She always thought it was so funny and delightful, singing those tricky words that were really other words. But now it’s just “nonsense” to her, which it really always was, I guess. But still.

mom laughing oct 2015
My main goal, when we are together now, is to laugh with her. Laughter is so good for the bones.

So she wanted to listen to John Denver’s soothing beautiful music. She particularly loves Rocky Mountain High and Sunshine on My Shoulders. And the song all our family legends are made of was on repeat one day, Back Home Again. She had to call to play it and sing it for her best friend in Tennessee. She mostly hummed, unable to recall words she has always loved. And she’d comment to her friend when a line of the song said something sweet, like, “…the light in your eyes that makes me warm,” She’d say, “That reminds me of you, Ronnie!” It was sweetness.

mom at sundown

But all week, Whenever the song, “Leaving on a Jet Plane” began, she’d come and hug me and say, “Oh, I don’t want you to go…how many more days do I have?” And I’d usual just say, “I’m here for a whole week,” even as the week was moving along. Because it would put her at ease and she’d say, “Oh, good.”

Then we’d giggle and sing along with John Denver, mom mostly humming and inserting comments.

All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go. I’m standing here outside your door*

“Oh no, Jeanie. Here let me help you un-pack your bags!”

I hate to wake you up to say good-bye.*

“Don’t wake me up for that!”

‘Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when I’ll be back again*

“You better get back here again quick!”

That is so true, mamala. I know you won’t see this blog (computer navigation was one of the first things to go), but we’ll laugh about this in heaven…

A couple of days before I had to leave, three of us were sitting on the love seat singing together, my mom, my little sister, and me. It was hard finding songs my mom could recall the words and following lyrics on the computer was’t working either. I went to a karaoke site and pulled up “Leaving on a Jet Plane.” We started singing away, getting that tight 3-part harmony from heaven found among family members alone.

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But as we came to the words, “So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you’ll wait for me,” I had to look away and I couldn’t sing. A catch in my throat and the tears began, because I heard her singing the words, but I knew, she won’t be waiting for me. She is going to keep walking this path and each time I see her, there’ll be a little less of her there.

I have heard Alzheimer’s called The Long Goodbye.  And so it seems it must be. My sorrow at watching her have to endure not just the memory loss, but the confusion, the frustration, and the growing inabilities to do what she loves is compounded by living over a thousand miles away. Knowing my time with her will be so limited by the miles between us, I will take every possible second of this long goodbye to hold in my heart.

Every chance I get, I will go to her and bless her and praise her for the woman she is and hug her tiny self as long as she wants (and she loves long hugs). I’ll massage her shoulders and brush her hair and stroke her face and let her curl up on my lap like she is my little girl. There is so little I can do, but I’ll hold on as long as she needs me to….

Hold me like you’ll never let me go*

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Give her everything she deserves!
    Festoon her life with praises!” Proverbs 31.31 The Message

Learn more from The Alzheimer’s Association Alzheimer’s is the 6th leading cause of death and is not just about having a diminishing memory. As the disease progresses, a person with Alzheimer’s loses their ability to walk, to sit and eventually to swallow.  Please pray for my sweet mamala, if you will. *Norma Jean*

*Lyrics to Leaving on a Jet Plane, John Denver.

“I collect pretty things”

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“I don’t know why I have all these things,” she said.  “I guess I just like to collect pretty things, anything at all that is pretty.  I just like them.”

Mom is aging.  Mom is losing memories to that dreaded disease {we can barely whisper it, dementia}, like the autumn tree loses leaves, softly, quietly ~ leaf begins its’ descent, down-down, a swirl and a sudden swoop upward, then, swept away in the wind, settling in a crevice on the earth’s floor.

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And she has a drawer, or two…maybe 4 in which she has stored photographs and newspaper articles and pictures of puppies and magazine tear-outs of scroll-y art which she plans to glue to an envelope or piece of paper for writing lovely, loving letters to some one she cares about.

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“I just wanna take pictures of the whole world.”   -Norma Jean, my mamala. November 2013

Some of us wish to “help her clean” those drawers, to lighten her load by getting rid of things and scraps we are certain she doesn’t really need.  I start to offer my help, I resist this urge.  Because despite the diminishing certainty in her brain,  and that facts and details are being swept out to a sea of forgetfulness (how very God-like, really, isn’t it?), these notes and papers and pictures and print-outs are all important to her, her tangible hold and her physical memory.  She wants them, needs them, she desperately clings to the information they hold for her.

I resist my urge to purge on her behalf. Instead, I let her pull them out again to recount the story of why she loves each one and her plans for what she’ll do with them. “I’m going to make a book of cars for Hunter to read to Kai. And this is a cartoon I thought Ronnie May would find so funny. Oh – look, here is my pattern for those Christmas-card trees I’ve been wanting to make…

I note something very new on this visit: I have a terrible time getting her to go for walks – this woman who has always loved outdoor activity and horseshoes and playing baseball and lassoing imaginary cattle.  Fear is the cruelest part.  She fears the walks on uneven surfaces because of the falls of the past year.  But when finally I get her there, her most vibrant, youthful, excited self shows up to investigate the woods and explore the paths with utter abandon and childlike enthusiasm. She out corn-holed both dad and me, twice! And she’d have kept throwing those corn-filled bags if night hadn’t fallen fully.

For my mamala is losing pieces and snippets

{a few leaves flutter to the ground around us on our walk}.

She is missing moments and words are escaping her

{a breeze – then swirls of yellow leaves swish and swoop finally making their way to the ground}.  There they go–

{the larger Elm and scarlet Maple leaves whisper as they pass us falling to the earth}

and simple tasks and skills slowly, slowly falling down.  Leaves flutter toward our feet {gravity is winning} catching the late day sun and something

 ~{a memory, a knowing} ~

once so sure, falls with them.

Then in a sudden flash of exuberance, “Oh look at that leaf, will you?” she’ll ask, and she picks it up from the ground and with it comes a vibrant, razor-sharp recollection.  And I’ll hear a story with detail-complete clarity and accuracy, but one I may never hear again – because she’ll remember it no more.

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She sometimes knows with utter and complete understanding, and seconds later is completely unaware that it is so.  And I have no desire to rush this process.  For whatever she loves, I will love.  Whatever brings joy to her heart, I will find joy in, through her eyes, Please help me with that, Lord.  Help me not to rush these days and these “silly things” she collects with child-like delight. Oh God, help me hold her most valuable treasures for her, as she loses the strength to do so…

She makes me laugh, her sweetness.

An assortment of colorful leaves falls from her handbag as I help her search for her wallet.  Because.  They are pretty.

“That’s just me, I reckon. I collect pretty things.”

This morning, rising early, I saw her on her back deck which faces the eastern-sky, just as the sun was rising and flickering through the tree branches which have formed a black lace as they have started to bare.  Beyond the expanse of grass, a wooded area where she daily enjoys the deer family as they graze, the sun began to emerge, finally exploding into bright light just above the trees.   It is where she goes to watch and wait for the return of Christ each morning.  I stood in the shadows, on this morning, and watched her worship, watched her raise her arms to welcome the day, to tell the Lord she looks for His return.  Every part of her open, loving heart belongs to the One she longs for…

“The Spirit and the bride say, ‘Come!’ And let the one who hears say, ‘Come!’ Let the one who is thirsty come; and let the one who wishes take the free gift of the water of life.” Revelation 22.17

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True story: {she is this very second showing me her biggest, prettiest Maple leaf, making sure I know all the reasons it is as beautiful and special as she thinks it is}…and I look at gentle and animated, piercing-blue eyes with a halo of ever-whitening hair, and I say yes, so beautiful, mamaladeeply beautiful, for so she is.

Even so, come, Lord Jesus…my mama is looking for You. And that, she does not forget.

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NOTE 10.28.15:: I just wrote about my recent trip to visit my mom and mentioned the dreaded “A” word for the first time (Alzheimer’s Disease) on this blog.  You may read about it HERE

Thought-Collage Thursday // Everything is Beautiful

*Everything is beautiful in its own way
Like the starry summer night or a snow-covered winters day

nate dirks quote beauty

If beauty just fades away, are all attempts to rectify it just hopeless endeavors?

I am like, 5-minutes from this particular age I cannot believe I am approaching. Soon I’ll be closer to my 60s than my 40s and when the heck did that happen?

So, I look at my split ends and these lines that just appear like the crackled sands in the Arizona desert around my eyes. My teeth are shifting and my current face shape has morphed into a form completely foreign to me. My metabolism, once so responsive to my outlandish demands, has betrayed me thoroughly.

If I could figure out how to do this aging thing gracefully, I would. But what the heck does that even mean? Does it mean just to go with the flow? I’ve always been too obstinate for that, yet I have never  had the desire to focus al lot of time on my looks or to spend copious amounts of each day fixing all things falling – and I sure don’t have the energy to start now!

But of course I want to be considered beautiful. I mean…Sometime. Before I die.

I would love to have that exotic gorgeousness of a Sophia Loren, or the classic sophistication of a Helen Mirren or a grace-filled quality like Blythe Danner – a beauty that just gets better with age. Granted, they started out very beautiful, but unlike so many women who seem to be chasing youth with plumpers, fillers, surgeon’s knives and soft-focus, there are these certain women, in spite of all the signs of their age, who are only more warmly burnished, more lovely, a beauty radiating from somewhere deep inside. Yeah – that! Please!

I’ve always heard that beauty fades. And that is that. And in our culture, youth = beauty, generally speaking. And now I am careening recklessly in a whole new direction. So what does it mean? Is all lost?

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In a book club, we’re reading Staci Eldredge, Becoming Myself – Embracing God’s Dream of You

Is it any wonder, as I ponder the seemingly unavoidable fading, I keep coming across beauty quotes on Pinterest and thoughts about it in books I am reading?

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Staci Eldredge tells the story of a day she had her hair done and it was a good hair day.  She looked in the mirror and knew she looked pretty. Then she put on a “nicer” pair of jeans for a meeting she had coming up, a red top and some earrings. She says in the book it wasn’t her usual look, but she loved it. She was feeling it. Her friend stopped by and told her, “You are inhabiting your beauty!”

She realized that she had worn the jeans before, she’d worn that top, she’d worn the earrings, but something in her spirit had relaxed and she was embracing herself, her own loveliness. She was inhabiting her beauty.

I like that because it really speaks of everything God believes about us – that we are created in His beautiful image. Our part is just to inhabit, embrace our beauty.

Quote found in Becoming Myself: “Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul.” – St. Augustine

In another chapter, she speaks of her type-A, driven mom, who, at 71 discovered how to inhabit her beauty though being ravaged by cancer. “Beauty will come,” Staci encourages us! Her mom began to loosen control and became softer and gentler. Staci says that through it, as her mom actually thanked God for the unexpected diagnosis, calling it the most “awesome, rewarding, and glorious time God has ever given me,” in her mom’s final months, the beauty that was always there began to come forth in her.

What? you mean it’s just hiding in here somewhere?!?  :)

“The Grand Canyon has been carved by water over years beyond counting into one of the most beautiful displays of nature in the world. My face, too, is being etched. My soul is being carved. Forces are at work sculpting me – my life, my views and my beliefs – honing and shaping and changing me. The process is sometimes painful and sometimes unnoticed, but the effect? Oh for the grace to see the effect as beautiful. To be able to see our lives, our bodies, our faces, our souls sculpted by time, our choices and the hand of our relentless, fierce and loving God as beautiful displays.”  -Staci Eldredge, Becoming Myself – Embracing God’s Dream of You

roald dahl quote on pinterestRoald Dahl quote

 

Diane Keaton book:  Let’s Just Say It Wasn’t Pretty

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I recently picked up a couple of books by film actress Diane Keaton. She is just fantastic! I love her talent and the subtle, quirky details she brings to the characters she plays. She also directs and produces and SINGS (best part of the recent And So it Goes) and lots of other things.

Stormie says that she and I are Diane Keaton and Mandy Moore in Because I said So, which I think is TOTALLY inaccurate, since I would never traipse about in spiked heels whilst carrying one of my cakes. But I digress.

I didn’t know Diane could write, but she can! And I LOVED these thoughts:

“These old-as-dirt days have one advantage: I’ve learned to see beauty where I never saw it before. But only because my expectations are more realistic. My favorite part of my body is my eyes…because of what they can see. When I was in my twenties and thirties, I wanted my appearance to be more interesting than the beauty that surrounded me. It was a fool’s folly.

On my fifteenth birthday my dad told me I was becoming   pretty young lady. My mom said I had a pretty smile. One of my teacher’s complimented me on my pretty new dress. I was old enough to understand that pretty was a poor cousin to beautiful. Pretty was the stuff of being friendly but not being friends. Pretty was the right dress…Pretty was Sandra Dee, easy and light. Pretty fades. Beautiful was Natalie Wood, deep like the ocean…Beautiful makes you come back for more. It makes you ask questions. It’s vast, unknowable and magnificent. That’s part of its power.

…there is no beauty without pain. Beauty flourishes on sorrow. It’s enriched by the knowledge that life is fleeting, sometimes cruel, and often ends without resolution. That’s what makes beauty deep.”

So, I’ve concluded – I don’t think beauty does fade.

Following my vast  ;)  research on beauty:

Beauty doesn’t fade. Beauty deepens. The first glimpse of a small green tomato on a vine thrills, but doesn’t compare to the complex, intoxicating flavor of the deep red glory of the fruit toward its end. That depth cannot be purchased at the grocery store. Or in a bottle.

Beauty doesn’t fade. Pretty fades.

Pretty gets dull, becomes passé, begins to sag and will fall to the ground despite the use of expensive fixatives.

But beauty, the real stuff of it – the part that began inside anyway and is waiting for the right moment to explode to the surface, dazzling and bright, knocking the wind from bystanders, that beauty – it deepens in time. It seeps into the broken places of our hearts and minds and covers scar tissue and heals our soul and calms our spirit and strengthens our bones.

Once it has erupted in magnificence, even after it has splashed on bystanders and returned like the ocean tide to its giver, there will be no lack. Because it will settle deeply.

Beauty doesn’t fade. It deepens. And if the sorrows of life that etch and wound and change us end up revealing the treasure within, then there is actually hope!

*And everybody’s beautiful in their own way.
Under God’s heaven, the world’s gonna find the way.

 *Lyrics: Everything is Beautiful by Ray Stevens (Ray Stevens and Jake Hess both won Grammy Awards singing it)